1st Edition
The Humanist (Re)Turn: Reclaiming the Self in Literature
The exciting new book argues for a renewed emphasis on humanism--contrary to the trend of post-humanism, or what Neema Parvini calls "the anti-humanism" of the last several decades of literary and theoretical scholarship. In this trail-blazing study, Michael Bryson argues for this renewal of perspective by covering literature written in different languages, times, and places, calling for a return to a humanism, which focuses on literary characters and their psychological and existential struggles—not struggles of competition, but of connection, the struggles of fragmented, incomplete individuals for integration, wholeness, and unity.
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Reclaiming the Self
Chapter Two
Transcendence Through Participation and Action in the Bhagavad Gita
Chapter Three
The Binding of Criseyde and Troilus
Chapter Four
Success and Failure of Transcendence in Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queene of Carthage and William Shakespeare’s Othello
Chapter Five
Transcendence as Disobedience and Choice in Clarissa, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre...
Chapter Six
Transcendence as Participation
Chapter Seven
Reclaiming A Solemn Bequest: Transcending Fragmentation, Recovering Trust, and Returning from Exile in Silas Marner
Chapter Eight
Transcendence Through Transgression and Kenosis
Epilogue: What Is to Come?
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Michael Bryson is a professor of English at California State University, Northridge, specializing in Shakespeare, Milton, Biblical and Classical literature, literary theory, and the history of European poetry and criticism. His previous books include Love and its Critics, The Atheist Milton, and The Tyranny of Heaven.
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